"They seem rather irrelevant at times," he admitted, with a smile.
"They're mere tags, labels, which can be attached to one as well as
another; they seem to belong equally to anybody."

"That is what I always say to myself," she agreed, with more interest
than he found explicable.

"But finally," he returned, "they're all that's left us, if they're left
themselves. They are the only signs to the few who knew us that we ever
existed. They stand for our characters, our personality, our mind, our
soul."

She said, "That is very true," and then she suddenly gave him the cards.
"Do you know these people?"

"I? I thought they were friends of yours," he replied, astonished.

[Illustration: A LIVELY MATRON, OF AS YOUTHFUL A TEMPERAMENT AS THE
LIVELY GIRLS SHE BROUGHT IN HER TRAIN, BURST UPON THEM]

"That is what papa thinks," Miss Gerald said, and while she sat dreamily
absent, a rustle of skirts and a flutter of voices pierced from the
surrounding shrubbery, and then a lively matron, of as youthful a
temperament as the lively girls she brought in her train, burst upon
them, and Miss Gerald was passed from one embrace to another until all
four had kissed her. She returned their greeting, and shared, in her
quieter way, their raptures at their encounter.

"Such a hunt as we've had for you!" the matron shouted. "We've been
up-stairs and down-stairs and in my lady's chamber, all over the hotel.
Where's your father? Ah, they did get our cards to you!" and by that
token Lanfear knew that these ladies were the Bells. He had stood up in
a sort of expectancy, but Miss Gerald did not introduce him, and a
shadow of embarrassment passed over the party which she seemed to feel
least, though he fancied a sort of entreaty in the glance that she let
pass over him.

"I suppose he's gone to look for _us_!" Mrs. Bell saved the situation
with a protecting laugh. Miss Gerald colored intelligently, and Lanfear
could not let Mrs. Bell's implication pass.

"If it is Mrs. Bell," he said, "I can answer that he has. I met you at
Magnolia some years ago, Mrs. Bell. Dr. Lanfear."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Dr. Lanfear," Miss Gerald said. "I couldn't
think--"

"Of my tag, my label?" he laughed back. "It isn't very distinctly
lettered."

Mrs. Bell was not much minding them jointly. She was singling Lanfear
out for the expression of her pleasure in seeing him again, and
recalling the incidents of her summer at Magnolia before, it seemed, any